Psychological Foundations of Curriculum

PSYCHOLOGY

Concerned with the question of how people learn, and curriculum specialists ask how psychology can contribute to the design and delivery of curriculum.

It provides a basis for understanding the teaching and learning process. Both processes are essential to curriculum workers because the curriculum has worth only when students learn and gain knowledge.

the unifying element of the learning process; it forms the basis for the methods, materials, and activities of learning, and provides many curriculum decisions.

Questions of interest to psychologists and curriculum specialists

Why do learners respond as they do to teachers’ efforts?

How do cultural experiences affect students’ learning?

How should curriculum be organized to enhance learning?

What impact does the school culture have on students’ learning?

What is the optimal level of student participation in learning the curriculum’s various contents?

Importance of this Foundation

1.Teaching the curriculum and learning it are interrelated, and psychology cements the relationship.

2.This disciplined field of inquiry furnishes theories and principles of learning that influence teacher-student behavior within the context of the curriculum.

3. Basis for understanding how the individual learner interacts with objects and persons.

4. Screen for helping determine what our objectives and how learning takes place.

Major Theoriesof

Learning

Behaviorist or

Association

Cognitive Information-Processing

Phenomenologicaland

Humanistic

deals with various aspects of stimulus-response (S-R) and reinforces.

Learning tends to focus on conditioning, modifying, or shaping behavior through reinforcement and rewards.

Twentieth Century

The behaviorists, represent traditional psychology rooted in philosophical ideas of

Aristotle Descartes Locke Rousseau

They emphasize conditioning behavior and altering the environment to elicit selected responses from the learner.

Underpinnings in Behaviorist Theory

Connectionism Thorndike’s Influence: Tyler, Taba, and Bruner Classical Conditioning Operant Conditioning Acquiring New Operants

founder of behavioral psychology. He focused on testing the relationship between a stimulus (something arousing interest) and a response (reaction) .

LEARNING as habit formation, as connecting more and more habits into a complex structure.

KNOWLEDGE comprised groupings of simple components of a skill.

TEACHING as arranging the classroom to enhance desirable connections and associations.

As one acquired more complicated units of association, one attained a more sophisticated understanding.

Law of Readiness suggests that, when nervous system is ready to conduct, it leads to a satisfying state of affairs.

Law of Exercise provides justification for drill, repetition, and review.

Law of Effect responses accompanied by satisfaction strengthen the connection; responses accompanied by discomfort weaken the connection.

1. behavior was influenced by conditions of learning.

2. learners’ attitudes and abilities could improve over time through proper stimuli.

3. instructional experiences could be designed and controlled.

4. it was important to select stimuli and learning experiences that were integrated, consistent and mutually reinforcing.

No one subject was more likely than another to improve the mind; rather learning was a matter of relating new learning to previous learning.

No hierarchy of subject matter.

had application and thus could be transferred to other situations. Rote learning and memorization were unnecessary.was based on generalizations and the teaching of important principles to explain concrete phenomena.

involves meaningful organization of experiences can be transferred more readily than learning acquired by rote.

The more abstract the principles and generalizations the greater the possibility of transfer.

Science and mathematics as the major disciplines for teaching structure.

was based on the science of behaviorism what was observable or measurable, not cognitive processes.

The key to learning was to condition the child in the early years of life.

The role of the stimuli is less definite, often, the emitted behavior cannot be connected to a specific stimulus.

Operant behavior will discontinue when it is not followed by reinforcement. positive reinforcement simply the presentation

of a reinforcing stimulus. negative reinforcement is the removal or

withdrawal of a stimulus.

Skinner believes in both positive and negative reinforcement, he rejects punishment because he feels it inhibits learning.

Behavior and learning can be shaped through a series of successive sequence of responses that increasingly approximate the desired outcome.

Through combination of reinforcing and sequencing desired responses, new behavior is shaped; this is what some people today refer to as behavior modification.

Observational Learning and Modeling. Albert Bandura ---cognitive factors are unnecessary in explaining learning; through modeling, students can learn to perform at sophisticated levels.

Hierarchical Learning. Robert Gagné --- comprises a sequence of instructional materials and methods from simple to complex.

Behaviorism and Curriculum

Curriculum specialists can adopt procedures to increase and that each student will find learning and enjoyable.

When new topics or activities are introduced, connections should be built on student’s positive experiences.

Things about which each student is likely to have negative feelings should be identified and modified, to produce positive results.

Behaviorists believe that the curriculum should be organized so that students can master the subject matter.

Combining behaviorism with learning includes careful analysis and sequencing of learners’ needs and behavior.

A. interested in generating theories that give insight into the nature of learning, specifically how individuals generate structures of knowledge and how they create or learn reasoning and problem-solving strategies.

B. interested not only in the amount of knowledge people possess but also in its type and its influence on further cognitive actions.

C. interested in the mind’s architecture.

Underpinnings in Cognitive Theory

The Montessori Method Jean Piaget Theories Piaget’s Influence: Tyler, Taba, Bruner and

Kohlberg Focus on Thinking and Learning Emotional Intelligence Problem Solving and Creative Thinking

۩ emphasized looking and listening, which she viewed as sensory input channels of learning and as the first phase of intellectual development.

1870-1952

believed that the more things a child listens to and looks at, the better for mental development.

emphasized a rich variety of visual and auditory inputs.

recognized that certain cognitive and social abilities develop before others: children sit before they walk, grab objects before they manipulate them, and babble before they talk.

enrich children’s school environment

provide children with success in performing tasks to bolster their self-confidence

provide structural play to teach basic skills

described cognitive development in terms of stages from birth to maturity.

1896-1980

1. Sensorimotor stage (birth to age two)

2. Preoperational stage (ages two to seven)

3. Concrete operations stage (ages seven to eleven)

4. Formal operations stage (ages eleven and up)

Piaget’s cognitive stages presuppose a maturation: mental operations are sequential.

The stages are hierarchical, the mental operations increasingly sophisticated and integrated.

Learning depends on the individual’s intellectual potential and environmental experiences.

His cognitive theories focus on environmental experiences.

The educator’s role involves, “the shaping of actual experience by environing conditions” and knowing “ what surroundings are conducive to having experiences that lead to growth.”

Piaget’s Influence

Three methods of organizing learning experiences:

1. Continuity– skills and concepts should be repeated within the curriculum

2. Sequence– the curriculum should progressively develop understanding

3. Integration– the curriculum’s element should be unified; subjects should not be isolated or taught as a single course.

concerned in organizing curricula and teaching new experiences so they are compatible with existing experiences, moving from concrete experiences to concepts and principles, and classifying and understanding new relationships.

what a person has already learned becomes an instrument of understanding and dealing effectively with the situations that follow.

previous learning is the basis of subsequent learning, learning should be continuous, and subject matter is built on a foundation (from grade to grade).

the development of children’s moral standards and concluded that our thinking about moral issues reflects not only our society but also our stages of growth and age.

Thinking and Learning

focus on thought processes, what is happening inside a person’s head.

the brain is complex, as is the process of thinking.

Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner – we must nurture all types of intelligence and all types of excellence that contribute to the worth of the individual and society.

we must consider the versatility of children and youth, their multiple abilities and ways of thinking and learning.

Eight types of intelligence: 1. verbal/linguistic 2. logical/ mathematical, 3. visual/ spatial 4. bodily/ kinesthetic, 5. musical/ rhythmic, 6. interpersonal, 7. intrapersonal, and 8. naturalistic

Emotional Intelligence

“ignoring human’s emotional side is shortsighted.”

It is important to remember that students’ feelings color their view of a topic, including their willingness to consider evidence. Emotions strongly influence how we treat information and even construct meaning.

Problem Solving and Creative Thinking

Students must be given supportive conditions in which they can develop creativity, but they must be held responsible for confirming or disproving the value or correctness of their assumptions.

Problem- solving procedures do not lead to creative discovery but establish discoveries’ validity.

COGNITION AND CURRICULUM

Most curriculum specialists, learning theorists, and teachers, are cognitive oriented because 1. the cognitive approach constitutes a logical

method of organizing and interpreting learning. 2. the approach is rooted in the tradition of

subject matter. 3. educators have trained in cognitive

approaches and understand them.

Learning in school involves cognitive processes, and because schools emphasize learning’s cognitive domain, it follows that most educators equate learning with cognitive developmental theory.

The teacher who has a structured style of teaching would prefer the problem-solving method, based on reflective thinking and scientific thinking.

Curriculum specialists must understand that school should be a place where students are not afraid to ask questions, be wrong, take cognitive risks, and play with ideas.

Schools should be places where students can fulfill their potential, and not always be right in order to be rewarded by the teacher.

emphasizes the total person. Individual self-awareness of an “I”. The study of immediate experiences as one’s

reality is called phenomenology and is influenced by, an existentialist philosophy.

Phenomenologist point out that the way we look at ourselves is basic for understanding our behavior.

Our self-concept determines what we do, even to what extent we learn.

Underpinnings in Phenomenology and Humanistic Theories

German word means shape, form, and configuration.

what people perceive determines the meaning they give to the field; likewise their solutions to other problems depend on their recognition of the relationship between individual stimuli and the whole.

On this basis, learning is complex and abstract. When confronted with learning situation, the learner analyzes the problem, discriminates between essential and nonessential data, and perceives relationships.

In terms of teaching, learning is conceived as a process of selection by the student.

Curriculum specialists must understand that learners will perceive something in relation to the whole; what they perceive and how they perceive it is related to their previous experiences.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Self-actualization(potential fulfillment)

Esteem needs(respect, power)

Love and belonging needs(social relationships)

Safety needs(emotional and physical)

Survival needs(hunger, thirst, sleep, sex)

The teacher’s and curriculum maker’s role in this scheme is to view the student as a whole person. The student is to be positive, purposeful, active, and involved in life experiences.

The goal of education is to produce a healthy, happy learner who accomplish, grow, and self-actualize.

Learners should strive for, and teachers should stress, student self-actualization and sense of fulfillment.

Rogers: Nondirective and Therapeutic Learning

Reality is based on what the individual learner perceives.

This concept of reality should make the teacher aware of that children will differ in their level and kind of response to a particular experience.

He views therapy as a learning method to be used by the curriculum worker and teacher.

He believes that positive human relationships enable people to grow; therefore, interpersonal relationships among learners are as important as cognitive scores.

The teacher’s role in nondirective teaching is that of a facilitator who has close professional relationships with students and guides their growth and development.

The teacher helps students explore new ideas about their lives, their school work, their relationships, and their interaction with society.

The curriculum is concerned with process, not products; personal needs, not subject matter.

There must be freedom to learn, not restrictions or preplanned activities.

The raw data of personal experiences are vital to understanding the learner.

It suggest maximum self-fulfillment, self-actualization, and self-realization.

Seek to understand what goes on inside us– our desires, feelings, and ways of perceiving and understanding.

Self-esteem and self-concept must be recognized as essential factors in learning.

Learners must feel confident about performing the skill or task required.

Student-teacher relationship be based on trust and honesty so that student knows when the teacher’s ideas of a subject are wise and deserve respect.

Value the uniqueness of human personality.

ConclusionLearning can be examined in terms of three

major theories: behaviorism, cognitive development, and phenomenology. We believe that change is occurring within the three major camps in psychology.

Behaviorism is being transformed into several teaching-learning models such as individualized learning, direct instruction, and mastery learning.

Cognitive development as an explanation of cognitive growth and development.

Phenomenology or humanistic can be considered the most recent learning theory. Its emphasis is on attitudes and feelings, self-actualization, motivation, and freedom to learn.

All three theories have something to contribute to explain various aspects of behavior and learning in classrooms and schools.

Readers should come to their own conclusions about what aspects of each theory they can use for their own teaching and curriculum development.